Vaccine hoarding fuels half-million shortfall in Africa

The African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT) has long had the finance needed to buy Covid-19 vaccines and has been engaging with all the manufacturers, but it is not able to secure deals with them and the vaccine-sharing platform Covax is also being edged out as developed countries horde vaccines, warned top public health officials on Thursday.

To date, about 8-million Africans have been infected with Covid-19 and 204,821 deaths have been reported on the continent.

Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa, said: “Export bans and vaccine hoarding have a chokehold on vaccine supplies to Africa. As long as rich countries lock Covax out of the market, Africa will miss its vaccination goals.”

The continent is nearly half-a-million doses short of the number needed to meet its 2021 vaccination target of inoculating 40% of the population, she said.

The WHO said “high-income countries have administered 48 times more doses per person than low-income nations”.

Africa has only been able to vaccinate about 3,6% of its population, compared with more than 60% in countries such as the UK.

“That is not the formula to beat a pandemic,” said Africa CDC director Dr John Nkengasong, referring to rising infection rates in countries such as Israel, which has been hit by the Delta variant.

As we gather next week at the UN General Assembly, it is my hope and wish that access to vaccines on the continent will take centre stage because we cannot live in a world of the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

—  Africa CDC director Dr John Nkengasong

This week the Africa CDC, in consultation with major public health bodies such as the WHO, revised its vaccination target for Africa upward from 60% to 70%, given the transmissibility of the Delta variant.

The third wave in Africa is slowly declining - new cases dropped on average by 14% over the past month - but 74% of the continent’s 55 countries are still experiencing high rates of infections, said Nkengasong.

The fourth wave is taking off in seven countries, with Egypt becoming the latest addition. Egypt, along with Somalia and Sudan, has an average reported death rate above 5%, above the continent’s average case fatality rate of about 4,3%.

Nkengasong said he did not believe the real death toll in Africa was significantly higher than the number reported, unlike the infection rate, which serological surveys have found to be higher than recorded numbers.

“It might be higher ... When we count things, we miss things, but I doubt we would be missing deaths three- or fourfold higher,” he said.

There were a large number of deaths reported in Africa’s third wave — about 72,000 from June to August — exceeding those in the second wave in Africa, he said.

“When the waves come, they come with severity ... and overwhelm the hospital systems and people die from other things, not only Covid-19.”

Nkengasong said: “As we gather next week at the UN General Assembly, it is my hope and wish that access to vaccines on the continent will take centre stage because we cannot live in a world of the vaccinated and unvaccinated.”